It seems simple enough, doesn’t it? Click on the Medium hyperlink, create an account, pop off a first post. You could be in and out and still have enough Pomodoro time left for the best part:
…and yet, here I am. I’ve read a grip of Medium posts from the Launch School publication and spent over an hour attempting to massage the discordant thoughts in my brain into something coherent and worth reading; not-so-deep-down, though, I knew it was all a sham. I knew I’d still end up here, struggling to put keystrokes to switch to PCB to USB to…yeah. Struggling to put virtual pen to paper.
Writing ain’t easy; writing out your thoughts ain’t easy; corralling your thoughts and rearranging them into something articulate ain’t easy; remembering what a gerund is…well, that’s impossible. Thanks, Google.
Most of what’s worth doing ain’t easy, though.
Don’t worry — I’m stopping myself before this devolves into a meaningless fluff piece (though I’d love to tell you The Top Ten Things You Should Do Every Morning To Achieve…nope, can’t even joke about it).
What I’m trying to articulate, I suppose, is that stuff is hard. Skills rust with disuse. Writing is a skill. Critical thinking is a skill. Articulating yourself is a skill. Acknowledging rust is hard. Cleaning that rust is hard. Keeping that rust away is hard. You get the idea.
Here I am, though. I see the rust, but I’m trying to wipe it away; that lazy, beguiling jerk in me is pouring cement on my fingertips, but I’m still typing out something. I’ve struggled with this time and time again — consistency is a skill that’s been perpetually rusty for me — but perhaps the only thing that hasn’t rusted for me is a skill that’s inherent to everyone: the ever-unglamorous skill of struggling.
I’m not here to laude myself with empty praise, though, or regale you with empty platitudes about the human condition or the plateau of Mastery. I’m not here to tell you…well, much of anything really.
I’m just here to mark an assignment as complete.
For now, at least.
I’ll come back to this later.
